By Joseph Mazur
Are United States military activities in Iran and Venezuela really about promoting democracy, curbing nuclear weapons, and combating drug trafficking?
The Trump administration has portrayed its activities in Iran and South America variously as well-intentioned endeavors to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, to support democracy, and to combat drug smuggling. Here, Joseph Mazur, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Emerson College’s Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies, argues that the administration’s foreign adventures are really about access to oil and mineral deposits, and bolstering the weapons industry.
If we search for reasons why wars start, we should look no further than who might benefit. Sometimes, war is a game to be played, a test of strength, power, or a showcase of weapons supremacy. Shallow diggings suspect it’s oil.
– President Donald Trump [1]
The epigraph above is an astounding invitation to Iran. Trump said those words at a rally in Grand Island, Nevada, speaking to his supporters. It shows his derangement with a statement of treason. Certainly not a joke, for it could be taken as an invitation to terrorists. Imagine: Los Angeles and San Diego combined have a population of 21 million, including more than 100,000 active-duty military personnel, and 6,700 schools. Mr. Trump thinks a statement like that could work, since most of his statements divert attention from maneuvers voters oppose. Watch the video here; see it to believe it.
– Jimmy Kimmel
Finally, America is waking up to what it should have noticed before installing a corrupt president in the White House Oval Office. It has democratically elected a pathological liar who has gotten us into a miscarried attempt to take down a country that has enough options to keep its war going indefinitely. When we ask for reasons, we get unreasonable replies that divert attention from his failures.
Our new wars are not about territory, retaliation on terror, or democracy
Oil is still the liquid gold, the price of war, peace, and survival in a world of a fast-growing population. We can survive the brutal aggressiveness of immoral autocrats and dictators who control territories and commodities for their own benefit by taking advantage of weaker states.
I have been saying and writing about this for a long time, long before these current war detractions from true causes. All wars are political, with hidden motives that benefit those in control; not territory, as in the 19th and 20th centuries, but a mixture of purposes, from weapons production and sales to acquiring mineral deposits. Between those two reasons comes the reason of power. Looking beyond the Israel-Gaza war, which was extraordinarily complicated by Iran-funded proxy forces that expanded the war to include a large portion of the Middle East that has never had a day of peace since the founding of Israel in 1948. The Iran and Ukraine wars are different, and yet the same. Behind the rhetoric of nuclear and NATO problems is the oil and gas. Ukraine has an estimated 5.4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, ranking second in gas reserves after Norway, and many insiders know that Russia’s invasions were meant to look cultural and political, though territory and natural resources such as gas remain a significant part of Russia’s purpose. [2], [3]
The first official statements coming from the White House when the war began confused the public by claiming that the reason for war was to help Iran’s domestic protesters succeed in regime change. Later, the White House statements swerved toward a new cause: abolishing Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Looking closer at the US-Iran war, we see that the cause was mostly about securing oil and energy. Iran has the second-largest crude oil deposits. With the US’s successful attacks on Venezuela, under the guise of attacks against drug smuggling, we now see that the attacks were really about oil. Venezuela has the largest number of proven oil reserves, 17.2 percent of the world’s total. [4] More than that, no other oil-producing country can rely on 500 years of proven crude oil reserve. Venezuela can.
Sources: Congressional Research Service (U.S. bases)
U.S. Naval Institute (naval assets); OpenStreetMap (pipelines)
Public Domain
In the world map above, we can see three countries with the largest proven crude oil reserves, far larger than the US. The US and private partners have seized control of 17 Venezuelan oil fields with approximately 9 billion metric tons of proven oil reserves. Saudi Arabia, with the second-largest proven crude reserves, has made a pure-and-simple grift deal with Jared Kushner, who is, hmm, coincidentally, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, a transaction artist who received millions in foreign deals while he was in office. In 2022, Kushner was granted a $1 billion loan and a $2 billion investment from a fund connected to the Saudi Crown Prince. In 2025, Kushner brokered an $83 billion takeover of Electronic Arts, a bold wager on the artificial intelligence entertainment boom launched by Kushner’s Affinity Partners, Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund, and America’s largest bank. [7]
Now, I must admit that I cannot find evidence that Trump or members of his family have diverted oil revenue from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia. However, investigations into this matter are beginning to raise questions about how and where the $13 billion in oil money from Venezuela has gone through US government accounts with little transparency. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating connections between the Departments of State, Treasury, Energy, Defense, and North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), an oil trading company “partner” of the US government, whatever that means. Here is what Robert Garcia, the Ranking Member of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, says:
“It is outrageous that the Trump Administration’s oil operation in Venezuela is now reportedly valued at $13 billion, while we still don’t know where the money has gone and why Congress has been kept in the dark. If this Administration has nothing to hide, it should immediately provide the transparency and answers the American people deserve.” [8], [9]
Let’s think about this more deeply. The Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, isn’t a fool; he knows some grift helps his country’s profits through connections with the Trump family. It seems to be working well for the Saudis. Readers might say, and have said, “Hogwash, the oil connection is just coincidental.” No. I wrote a book titled Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence that mathematically analyses reasons for coincidences. [10] I can tell you now that, sometime before the end of the war, if there ever is one, a deal will be made over Iran’s massive proven crude oil reserves, a fossil fuel likely to be commercially recoverable. Wait and see his connection to oil, and his foreign policy focus on two—not three—countries with the largest proven crude oil reserves?
The Trump administration knows that Venezuela is by a long way the only country with an estimated 500 years of crude oil reserves, assuming no change in reserves. Iran is not too far behind, with estimates of 141 years. What he did not know is that, though Iran no longer has a navy or air force, his war with Iran is equal in strategic power on the current battlefield with the US. Causing major disruptions to oil refineries and delivery options may be part of Iran’s game, because those troubles affect prices, profits, and industries that sell less oil for more money. Trump sees this. He doesn’t care about oil transport troubles because oil is in demand worldwide. With military power, he can eventually make deals for large partnerships that underhandedly line his and his allies’ pockets. The Trump administration is a corrupt organization of cronies that see profits that could, for a price, be made by heavily ignoring moral judgment.
A superpower flees
Watch how American power declines under the leadership of Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth, the incompetent defense secretary who led his military into retreat, pulling back his forces from the Middle East and Britain. Bases had to be closed after Iran’s proxies devastated them with attack drones. Those retreats reveal American military vulnerabilities. It is difficult to understand why this war was started, when the Pentagon has hundreds of military analysts dedicated to understanding Iran and its war with the US. And now, Iran is planning attacks against Americans. Intelligence agencies, according to Jay Clayton, the Director of US National Intelligence, “received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel. The lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries.” The US has blundered so badly by having to withdraw from the Middle East and alarm Americans overseas that it gave the Iranians enough power to keep the war going, as the straits bottleneck oil deliveries, when American taxpayers pay $1 billion per day to continue the war. More than that, its potential adversaries watch the blunder and exploit US military weaknesses, thinking superpowers are just military straw.
It is about oil. It always was
As I have said in my previous article, “All wars are political, with unreasonable reasons. Some are unwarranted, some baseless, some absurd, some illogical, some stupid, and some outright wacky. This war that the United States and Israel started fits all the reasons above, but worse, the ignorance of history and intelligence creates a war in chaos that cannot end soon.” [11]
Russia is helping Iran target American forces in the Middle East by supplying intelligence coordinates to hit American bases; yet, Donald Trump, in one of his personal benefit deals with Vladimir Putin, was promised a supply of over 4 million tons of diesel fuel to the US. This comes from Trump’s desperation to find a way to solve the problem of fuel shortages and price increases that he created by starting a war with a country of which he had no cultural, political, or military understanding. He thinks his deal will magically solve the massive energy shortage problem. And now he is in business with Putin, who is repeatedly bombing hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and medical personnel while knowing those strikes are forbidden by Geneva Convention protocols. [12]
The Trump-Putin agreement
Remember those sanctions targeting Russia, its oligarchs, and financial institutions that were passed and signed into law last September (Bill H.R. 5334)? It was a law meant to help Ukraine by tariff-walloping countries dealing with Russia. That was one month before the president who signed that bill reversed course by signing an executive order two days before H.R. 5334 was set to take effect. There is no indication that Trump and Putin discussed the reversal of the bill as a deal. If it was, what else was part of the deal? Whatever the agreement, diesel was discussed, hundreds of thousands of metric tons. It is tantamount to an agreement that could be marginally inflated as: You give me 300,000 metric tons; I give you Ukraine. At the very least, his deal heavily favors Russia by straining almost all European allies.
Why did Trump consent to such a lose-lose deal when 300,000 metric tons of Russian diesel fuel will hardly change the global supply deficit? Nobody knows, because no one can say whether or not some shady exchange is buried in the deal. The US Energy Information Administration estimates a three-week, insignificant dip in prices. As Vijay Vaitheeswaran, director of the Energy and Climate Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), points out, “The idea that there might be lower prices coming because of an innovative deal that President Trump did, with his relationship with Putin, sounds pretty good [to voters].” And Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow at CFR, went further, saying, “The diesel deal was a major shock for the Ukrainians, for European governments, and members of Congress who thought they were slowly moving Trump toward new sanctions on Russia. It showed the U.S. was willing to start dismantling sanctions unilaterally, even when doing so violated its own laws.” [13]
Public Domain
Nobody has an answer to the question: Why did Trump consent to such a lose-lose deal? Those who say they know claim that he is subservient to Putin, even though it seems that his consenting to such deals undermines the security of Europe and is not in the best interest of the US. Some feel Trump has always been a weak, insecure man who is intimidated by strong men. He needs to look and feel strong by aligning with a significantly more powerful person governing Russia. However, in the reality he cannot see, he doesn’t look strong when giving Russia concessions with no payback.
Unless! Unless there is some scandalous business deal that we can guess but know nothing about.
So far, the only evident payback was the release of an American held in Russia for four years. Steve Witkoff, the US Special Envoy to the Middle East, alias real investor, who brokered the release, thanked Putin with a welcoming message: “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that.” A humanitarian!? He is responsible for over a million people killed and wounded by his four-year war with Ukraine!
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
It seems the US president now aspires to have business dealings with Russia, a country that bombs US allies. Diesel fuel might dip in price by a penny or two, from Trump’s deal with Putin to benefit by helping Iran win its war with the US, and Russia to take on new territory in Ukraine before any ceasefire begins, if ever. Is this insane, or not? As I keep saying, in Donald Trump’s mind, the main interest is a deal that benefits him, and the only deal he can make is about oil, which benefits him and his family. Why? He was once just a millionaire with no social connection to the billionaires living on the east side of Central Park in New York City. Now, as a president who can get away with corruption to get riches and recognition that didn’t welcome him into the one percent. Like his obsession with winning a Nobel Peace Prize, he has always been angry with the billionaire class that once ostracized him.
Again, he is talking about Iran not having a nuclear weapon, as if that is the purpose of his war. It is not! The purpose now is to end his war on Iran with some unbelievable grand exit, claiming victory while permitting Russia to escalate its bombardment campaign on Ukraine, which would force another winter year of freezing home temperatures.
Source: Stefan Prohaczka
A gift to the Kremlin
Trump’s initial reason for attacking Iran was always about the prospects of a deal that would divert oil to the US, as he did with that other country in possession of enormous amounts of proven crude oil. Trump is a wannabe magician who has us look the other way when he underhandedly maneuvers deals that we cannot see, though we can if we examine his true intentions. He will risk catastrophic incidents of war and loss of life, and use immoralities to get his deals. For him, US foreign policy is getting back to business with Putin, and perhaps that tower in Moscow he’s always wanted.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Lifting US sanctions on Russian diesel exports to the US was a gift to Russia with no concession in return. With that lift, Trump blames Ukraine for higher gas prices around the world, not Iran. “He wants to make problems for the world,” Trump said, referring to Volodymyr Zelensky. “He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers with diesel fuel because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world.” The deal was to lower fuel prices in America before the midterm elections that happened on November 3rd. It may not be a direct financial payout to Trump himself. However, with no direct evidence of financial dealings intended for Trump or his family, this deal hurts “Ukrainian efforts to defend itself, as any major purchase of Russian fuel would help fund Moscow’s war machine.” [14] With no public disclosures otherwise, this gift to Moscow might privately include a payback in the future.
But the future payback is already here. Dark money is being funneled to the fossil fuel industry through groups that do not disclose their donors. In 2024, the oil and gas industry gave $11.8 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and millions more to his super PAC. In return, he gave $18 billion in tax incentives to oil and gas firms. [15] Will we ever know anything about repayment deals that will come to his personal profits from the Kremlin? If it isn’t about oil, it is surely about money. But for whom?
“We’re making a freaking fortune,” Trump said on October 24, during a midterm campaign rally in Georgia. “Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what’s happened in the Middle East, because they’re coming to Texas, and they’re coming to Oklahoma, and they’re coming to Louisiana, and they’re taking that oil. They’re making hundreds of billions of dollars.” [16] But who’s taking that oil? One must wonder!
America comes safely back to being a strengthened democracy
Now, as I write this on November 4th, one day after those midterm elections, I must take a moment to write about America’s celebration. As I predicted in my TWFR column last June, I wrote: “Name a country that has been a constitutional democracy for more than 50 years and turned into an authoritarian state for more than 25 years. It’s hard to name one because those that might pass with ill-defined acceptances are rare and, in some cases, depending on interpretation, do not exist.” [17] America has been a democracy for 250 years, a tough country for an autocrat to attempt challenging morality and gaining supremacy beyond constitutional executive power. My prediction was correct. America has awakened to vote, hoping to strengthen a fragile democracy. A blue wave was predicted, but surprisingly it was a blue tsunami. America is back, with the power to end the Trump era of bullying neighbors and allies, brazen profiteering, repression, and incompetence. Mr. Trump, in a stinging rebuke, is now a lame duck without a wing. The election results are astounding, even for a prognostication optimist like me. Democrats won almost every competitive race in the states. They now hold a sound majority in the Senate and a very strong majority in the House.
– Former President Barack Obama
But now I have another prediction. To make my point clear, I want my readers to remember that what I predict will happen before January 20, 2029, when the unpopular president’s term in office ends. Though the Trump era is close to its end, the autocratic imitator can still manipulate power. Watch what happens when that war ends with a deal with Iran on oil that would directly or indirectly profit him, his family, and cronies. Do not underestimate his ability to connive a deal that brings humiliation to what was once the most powerful military in the world, and shame to America as a country, as he stuffs whatever he grifts to his family’s offshore bank accounts outside US jurisdiction with billions of dollars that belong to US taxpayers.
We are living in a violent world with some peace, too much corruption and immorality, and significantly dwindling reliability. Oil is still the liquid gold that dictates the price of war, the price of peace, and moral answers on how to survive. Add that to the aggressiveness of dictators who command control of commodities and territory by means of strange habits that have worked in the past but are now messing with the globe rather than just with the weak.
Now, let me be generous about Trump’s immoral behavior. He was given a gift. In 2024, the US Supreme Court, in Trump v. United States, ruled by a 6-3 majority verdict: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. [18] That decision gave presidents broad criminal immunity. When a person is given such a gift of absolute immunity, a brain-change can follow as that person welcomes and uses the advantage. In Trump’s case, that pattern goes back to his childhood, when he was a high school senior at the New York Military Academy. The story is well confirmed: a confrontation “culminated with Trump allegedly attempting to throw his classmate out of a second-floor window.” It wasn’t the only such violent instance, but because his father threatened “a big lawsuit,” he retained his rank and was hardly charged for his behavior. In 2024, his soccer teammates recalled “the early roots of the cult of personality that surrounds him today.” [19] His upbringing made him who he is, a forceful grifter who believes and uses the power of his broad immunity.
Back to oil. He believes the oil is his to grab, just as he believes the White House is his to build a ballroom around. (With no public record confirming whether he swims, he fancies eliminating news organizations from the James S. Bradly Press Briefing Room to build a swimming pool there. Does he swim?) He believes that everything is his to appropriate, including the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, or both. My country has been taken over by his Supreme Court gift, a gift of “yes” for anything our president wishes, even those that will destroy the country, which will become poorer while he gets richer. So, he might not get an ocean, and maybe not even oil from Iran. Believing he can negotiate an oil deal, he will try. Fortunately, for us, he has little support other than his sinking MAGA cult that is waking up by understanding that he is not paying attention to his promised policies.
Oil is still the liquid gold that dictates the price of war and peace, and we know how much Trump loves gold. He believes his art of deals will get him gold. He sees oil as a kind of gold that draws him to take it when he can; the more he has, the richer he feels. If he can make a money deal, much like part of his family has with Saudi Arabia, that country is off the charts of war. Yet, with his continuous inability to accept the reality of his intelligence reports, he launched a war on a resilient country without even considering the Weinberg or Powell Doctrines or without exhausting diplomacy or an exit strategy. His only plan to end his futile war is “negotiations that will depend on how much oil or money could be made on the side.” [20] He hopes for a deal, but none has come yet. Gold is his goal, his priority. The US economy may fall with his excessive tariffs, Europe may fall to Russia’s advance, and military invasions may rock the world after NATO declines and humanitarian crises ring alarms. Does he care if he gets his black gold?
But Americans are now awakened by the chaos and corruption of the current president. They have voted with the power and strength of their democracy. As I say and believe, “America has been a democracy for 250 years, a tough country for an autocrat to attempt challenging morality and gaining supremacy beyond constitutional executive power.” We voted and won, strikingly, taking back our democracy and making it stronger than ever.
About the Author
Joseph Mazur is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Emerson College’s Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Bogliasco, and Rockefeller Foundations, and the author of eight acclaimed popular nonfiction books. His latest book is The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time (Yale).
Notes
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wefPGzG0Ypw
[2] https://www.enseccoe.org/publications/ukraines-resources/
[3] https://www.geo.gov.ua/wp-content/uploads/presentations/en/oil-and-gas-guide-2021.pdf
[4] https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-reserves-by-country/#google_vignette
[5] https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world
[6] https://www.cfr.org/articles/kharg-island-irans-oil-lifeline-and-a-tempting-u-s-target
[7] https://www.afr.com/companies/games-and-wagering/how-jared-kushner-brokered-the-83b-takeover-of-electronic-arts-20251001-p5mzds
[8] https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/ranking-member-robert-garcia-escalates-investigation-into-trump-administration-venezuelan-oil-management-as-revenue-exceeds-13b
[9] https://doggett.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/doggett.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/doggett-letter-to-rubio-and-bessent-on-qatar-bank-and-venezuelan-oil-sales.pdf
[10] Joseph Mazur, Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence (New York: Basic Books,2016)
[11] https://worldfinancialreview.com/the-purpose-of-war-if-there-is-one/
[12] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63727260
[13] https://www.cfr.org/articles/trumps-russian-diesel-deal-explained
[14] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
[15] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fossil-fuel-industry-donors-see-major-returns-trumps-policies
[16] https://www.businessinsider.com/high-gas-prices-donald-trump-oil-companies-midterm-election-2026-10
[17] https://worldfinancialreview.com/autocratizing-democracies-a-war-just-for-power-part-1/
[18] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
[19] https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/21/donald-trump-soccer-career-world-cup-nyma
[20] https://worldfinancialreview.com/the-purpose-of-war-if-there-is-one/
